Compete against yourself. YOU are the project.

Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars by Patrick Lencioni

Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors by Patrick Lencioni (affiliate link)(non-affiliate link)

What I’ve learned from the Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars:

Crisis is a powerful, reuniting force

It’s better not to wait for a true crisis to make changes. You can create a internal crisis

Common goals bring the organization together.

The organizations goals can be organized as:

The Thematic Goal – 1 primary objective with a time line.

The Defining Objectives – milestones and subtasks required to achieve the primary goal. Objectives are owned by units of the organization.

The Standard Operating Objectives – some things need to be happening all the time despite not directly moving towards The Thematic Goal. You gotta keep the lights on, and you can’t neglect the fundamentals in pursuit of other objectives.

What inspired me from this book:

The story of this book reminds me of my favorite part of Apollo 13. *spoiler alert*. When the astronauts of Apollo mission 13 are at risk of coming home, the news was all over television and radio. The spacecrafts engineering team lead immediately flew back to his office. He arrived at 2am to find the whole team (hundreds of people) there, looking for ways to help. Crisis brings the best out of people. People put themselves aside and show up to help without being asked.